Editor,
The fight to safeguard the rights, land, identity and future of indigenous tribal communities is not only legitimate, but deeply necessary. Organisations and movements that raise their voices against the unlawful alienation of tribal land, exploitation of indigenous people, and threats to constitutional protections deserve recognition for bringing these issues into public consciousness. As members of tribal communities ourselves, we have every reason to support genuine efforts to protect our collective rights.
But there is an important constitutional line that must never be crossed.
A noble cause does not create extra-constitutional powers.
Increasingly, there appears to be a tendency among certain self-appointed guardians of society to seek detailed information about private citizens and their personal assets from government offices, including information relating to land allotments and ownership. The stated objective may be the protection of tribal land and indigenous interests. Yet the legitimacy of that objective cannot automatically legitimise every method adopted in its pursuit.
There is a fundamental principle that appears to be getting lost in this debate: the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution of India.
Privacy is not a privilege granted at the discretion of an organisation, a government officer, or a social movement. It is a constitutional protection belonging to the individual. The Supreme Court's landmark judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India recognised privacy as a constitutionally protected right flowing from the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Therefore, the question is not whether tribal rights should be protected. They absolutely should.
The question is who gets to decide when a private citizen's personal information can be collected, accessed or disclosed, and under what lawful authority?
A private organisation, association or social movement is not a parallel government. It is not a court. It is not an investigative agency simply because it has adopted a socially important cause. It cannot assume that its declared intention gives it unrestricted access to the private affairs of every citizen.
For instance, an organisation such as the ST Bachao Andolan may certainly raise concerns about suspected illegal transfers of tribal land, investigate matters through lawful means, approach competent authorities, seek information through legally available mechanisms, or ask individual landholders questions where appropriate. These are legitimate avenues of civic engagement.
But there is a profound difference between investigating a specific allegation and seeking comprehensive personal information concerning every citizen in an entire district.
A blanket demand for land-allotment details of citizens is not merely a harmless exercise in transparency. Land records can reveal sensitive information about an individual's property, family circumstances, financial position and personal affairs. Such information cannot be treated as though it belongs to the public merely because it happens to be held by a government office.
Government custody of information does not automatically mean unlimited public entitlement to that information.
This is precisely where constitutional safeguards matter.
The protection of tribal land and the protection of individual privacy are not competing causes. Both can and must coexist. We should not allow one constitutional value to become a weapon against another. The fight for indigenous rights cannot be transformed into a justification for disregarding the constitutional rights of individual indigenous citizens themselves.
Indeed, there is something deeply contradictory about demanding protection for a community's rights while simultaneously treating the privacy and liberty of members of that same community as expendable.
If there is credible evidence that a particular piece of land has been illegally transferred, allotted or occupied, let the specific matter be investigated. If a particular transaction violates the law, let the competent authority examine it. If wrongdoing is suspected, let evidence be produced and due process followed.
But suspicion cannot become surveillance, and activism cannot become authority.
There must be accountability on both sides. Government officials should not casually disclose private information merely because an organisation demands it. At the same time, private organisations must recognise the limits of their own authority and respect the constitutional framework within which every citizen, institution and government body operates.
The Constitution does not contain a footnote saying that fundamental rights disappear when the cause is sufficiently righteous.
The protection of tribal rights is a constitutional and moral responsibility. So is the protection of individual liberty and privacy. The answer is not to choose one over the other, but to insist that both be protected through law, evidence, due process and competent institutions.
We should be careful about creating new guardians who believe that, because they have appointed themselves defenders of society, they are entitled to know everything about society.
A movement can be powerful without becoming a parallel authority.
A citizen can demand accountability without surrendering privacy.
And the fight for tribal rights will be stronger, not weaker, when it is conducted within the Constitution rather than above.
A Citizen